OnePlus 12 Smartphone Review

OnePlus 12 Smartphone Review – The OnePlus 12 was announced in December 2023 and the smartphone will begin shipping later this month. The new 5G smartphone is the flagship smartphone of OnePlus and it will be available globally. It comes as a successor to the OnePlus 11 smartphone but in terms of design, it hasn’t changed and looks almost the same.

The OnePlus 12 is designed to feature the best of everything the OnePlus 12 has to offer, especially in the camera department. OnePlus claims it’s their best flagship yet, something we will soon find out. So, let’s begin with a detailed review of the OnePlus 12 smartphone and see if this smartphone is worth purchasing.

OnePlus 12 Smartphone Review

Highlights

1. The OnePlus 12 smartphone features a 6.82-inch LTPO AMOLED display with 2K+ resolution, 120Hz high refresh rate, 1 Billion Colors, 4500 nits peak brightness, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision.
2. The chipset inside the OnePlus 12 is the 4nm  Qualcomm SM8650-AB  Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 5G SoC, which has a clock speed of 1×3.3GHz.
3. The OnePlus 12 smartphone arrives with Android 14 out-of-the-box with OxygenOS 14 for more customization options.
4. The OnePlus 12 smartphone has a 50MP triple rear camera system, while the selfie camera has a 32MP sensor.
5. The phone has a Li-Po 5400mAh battery and supports 100W wired fast charging along with 50W wireless fast charging.

Design and Display

The OnePlus 12 looks the same as the OnePlus 11 but with slight changes in button placement. The volume buttons and the alert slider swiped places. Apart from that, there’s a second flash in the camera island at the top-left side just outside the camera module and that’s about it. That’s all the difference in design when both models are compared side by side. There are changes in color obviously but from a purely design perspective, very minute changes.

That’s not to say that the design is bad in any shape or manner but it’s just that we expected OnePlus to feature a new design at this point. However, if you can keep the expectations at bay, the design is actually quite premium and OnePlus may have done the right thing by reusing the same design and using the R&D resources elsewhere. The OnePlus 12 features the same aluminum and glass construction and is still just as premium as the OnePlus 11 if not more.

It features a sophisticated and premium design that not only looks good but fantastic in hand, thanks to the chamfered edges. As for the display, OnePlus 12 features a 6.82-inch LTPO AMOLED display with 2K+ resolution just like how it was in OnePlus 11. The display was already close to perfect and didn’t need a change anyway. But people did feel that the peak brightness was indeed a bit lower in OnePlus 11, so OnePlus changed the game altogether.

The display can get as bright as 4500 nits at peak brightness levels under direct sunlight. The display also features a 120Hz high refresh rate, 1 Billion Colors, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. The company also boasts that the display has a 2,160Hz PWM dimming feature, which will ensure you see no flick when using the smartphone, even at lower brightness. The OnePlus 12’s display is also protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which will protect your new smartphone from both drops and scratches.

The side frame is made out of aluminum, which provides the smartphone with all the strength and rigidity it needs. The smartphone also carries an official IP65 water and dust resistance, which will come in real handy if you ever accidentally drop your new phone into a fish tank or the swimming pool. The OnePlus 12 will be made available for purchase in Black, Green, and Silver.

Memory and Internal

OnePlus equipped the OnePlus 12 with the latest and Qualcomm’s most powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 5G SoC. This is the most powerful Android chip from Qualcomm and it has a clock speed of 1×3.3GHz. It features an octa-core CPU configuration and is manufactured at a 4nm process node for better performance and efficiency. We hoped Qualcomm would move to 3nm this time since Apple also moved to 3nm, but we will just have to wait for Qualcomm’s next flagship for that.

Even at 4nm, this chipset is quite efficient and the thermal performance is quite decent. OnePlus went ahead and featured a much larger vapor chamber, which will make sure the smartphone never overheats. It has more than enough power to run everything smoothly. Most people won’t even come near to fully utilize this much power unless they run heavy applications and games. For daily stuff, it’s more than enough.

The GPU of the chipset is the Adreno 750, which is quite powerful and will run all your favorite games like PUBGm, CODm, and Genshin Impact at their highest settings and the highest framerates. The OnePlus 12 also has support for 5G connectivity and will feature multi-gigabit speeds.

The OnePlus 12 also runs on Android 14 out of the box with OxygenOS 14 for internationally and ColorOS 14 for China, which provides a lot of customization support. OnePlus also promises to provide 4 major Android updates and that will certainly expand the software experience in the long run. For memory and storage, the OnePlus 12 is available for purchase with up to 12GB/16GB/24GB of RAM and 256GB/512GB/1TB of fast UFS 4.0 internal storage.

Camera

The OnePlus 12 has a 50MP triple-camera setup. The primary camera consists of a 50MP sensor with multi-directional PDAF autofocus and OIS and this sensor is capable of taking some incredible pictures with great detail levels and accurate color. These images have OnePlus’s signature color tone and a high dynamic range. The second camera is a periscopic telephoto camera that consists of a 64MP sensor.

This sensor is capable of capturing pictures at a 3x optical zoom and manages to preserve all the details. The quality of these images can easily go toe to toe with other flagships released this year. While the quality is really great, other flagship smartphones can capture photos at even 5x or even 10x zoom levels optically, so it falls short in that area. The third camera is an ultra-wide camera and it consists of a 48MP sensor.

This ultra-wide sensor manages to preserve all the details in every shot it takes with little to no shift in colors from the primary sensor. There’s also no distortion around the edges in the ultra-wide shot. On the front, the OnePlus 12 has a 32MP selfie camera that can take great selfies with natural skin tones and proper dynamic range to highlight the subject’s face.

When it comes to video recording, the rear cameras can shoot videos at up to 8K@24FPS, including 4K@60FPS. But the selfie camera can only shoot at a maximum resolution of 4K@30FPS. The main rear camera also has OIS support, which along with gyro-EIS will make the footage extremely stable and come in handy when it comes to recording video footage. The selfie camera only has gyro-EIS

Battery and Others

The OnePlus 12 has a Li-Po 5400 mAh battery, which is a high-capacity battery capable of running the smartphone for a day or more with moderate usage such as taking a few pictures, listening to music, and a bit of social media. But if you are a heavy user or play a lot of games, then the battery inside the smartphone may not even last a full day and require another charge by the end of the day. Gaming can be very taxing on system resources, so it drains the battery faster.

But with a limited amount of gaming, the smartphone may still provide more than a full day’s worth of battery life. When the smartphone does run out of battery, you can quickly recharge the smartphone using both wired and wireless charging. The OnePlus 12 supports up to 100W of fast wired charging, which can fully charge the smartphone in under 30 minutes.

But if you are not a fan of wired charging, then there’s support for 50W wireless charging as well. Apart from that, the smartphone has support for tri-band Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, an under-display fingerprint sensor, NFC, and a USB Type-C connector for charging. The smartphone will start at $600 (Rs 49,990 in India) approx.

OnePlus 12 Pros and Cons

OnePlus 12 Specifications Detail

Down below you can see the full specifications of the OnePlus 12 smartphone.

Conclusion

The OnePlus 12 may feature design as its predecessor OnePlus 11, but internally almost everything has changed for the better. Almost every internal component on the new OnePlus 12 is an upgrade compared to the OnePlus 11, especially the cameras, which have seen the biggest improvements and put it in a league of its own, especially at the price point it launched for. With the pricing in mind and the features it provides, the OnePlus 12 does seem to provide great value, especially for those who want to upgrade from a OnePlus 8T or OnePlus 9.

Not to mention, if you are a OnePlus fan, this is the best smartphone you can buy to get the OnePlus experience. However, if OnePlus smartphones are not your cup of tea, then you may try some alternative smartphones. The Xiaomi 14 smartphone, for instance, is an excellent smartphone that is also available at a similar price with similar specs. However, the final decision is up to you, so it is better to choose a smartphone based on your needs and requirements.